PRE-PRAIRIE PREMONITIONS:
The sessions at Paisley Park in 1990 were weird & great.
I met a lot of generous & extremely talented musicians who
were patient & professional & always treated me like one of
their own. Had it not been for them & the studio staff who
pretty much adopted me, it would have been a painful time
of flux & dark uncertainty. Paisley Park is one of the most
beautiful Studio complexes I’ve had the privilege to work in.
Everything about it, from the staff, to Princes’ Purple Cops
& the huge film stage out back set it apart from all other
studios.
Looking down at the Earth as we came in to land that February
at Minneapolis international I couldn’t understand what the hell
I was seeing nor could I get any sense of scale. The ground below
looked like a war zone, a world peppered with enormous holes as
far as the horizon, bomb craters, gaping mouths with salty lips
howling at the sky, white powder blown into the contours of the
Earth like an old sea dog’s leather face, dirt as black a peat.
We stayed outside the city at Canhassen, in a brand new ship-lap
hotel with a high canopied porch in the Greco-Roman style. It was
run by an ex-U.S.-submarine captain who, though friendly to everyone,
gave special attention to anyone on an extended mission a long way
from home. Though it was walking distance, we usually drove the
white Ford Probe to work every day, but then, as the sessions began
to start progressively later, Andrew & I would get up early, breakfast
with the local Law Enforcement & take off for hours, driving across
the Prairies.
There were a lot’ve ex-Northern European tribes out there, towns
with German street names, Flaxen haired people with Scandinavian
features & dart boards in the bars. We bought maps to follow the
sinuous curves of the Mississippi, pinpointing places that looked
weird, observing Winter turn into Spring as Skidoo runs melted making
way for the gentle rhythm of breeze-blown Prairie grasses. Trucks that
had been parked all winter on feet-thick lake-Ice where moved,
Fisherman’s huts hauled away for another year as Ice-holes melted
so that speedboats & sleek white cruisers could ferry bar-b-que-ing
families to distant foreshores. Terrapins perched on logs, moved
faster than startled dogs at the sound of approaching footsteps &
blizzards subsided into midnight heat inspiring bullfrogs to sing
in shallow ponds accompanying the clank of railway crossing bells
as long trains rattled over points, slipping through town as everyone
slept.
(K)
Karl Hyde 